It's already been a year since we didn't become better people, but it never hurts to try again.

We haven't really done resolutions in that we aren't going to commit to running a set number of miles per week, and we're not going to eat more vegetables even though we should, and we're not going to lose weight (I saw a poster that said that the 20 lbs you gained over the holidays makes your resolution of losing 10 less impressive, and this applies here).  But we do have goals, and one of the few things that I learned from Motivational Psychology in college was that writing them down is a good step towards attainment.  So we sat down and came up with the following "be a better person by next year" list.

Spiritually:  

Truly pray for the people that we say we will pray for, and write it down so we don't forget.  I hate it when people use the phrase "I'll be praying for you" or "you're in my prayers" because while well-meaning, that's a lie and what they mean is "I'm glad it's you and not me and that makes me feel sorry for you".  I am certainly guilty of confusing the two sentiments, but they're not the same thing.

Create goals within the groups that we lead at church to improve the preschool  and elementary school ministries, and follow through with them.  Sean would like to add here that he's going to "keep doing what he's doing".  I guess Meredith Lamb needs to humble him a little in the near future.

Read the Bible every day.  "Quiet Time" is something that we both struggle with and could do much better holding each other accountable in.  There have been times that we've been much better when we have a more structured plan, so that's something that we need to reinstate.

Consider leading an e-group in the fall.  Either for young married couples or for high school/middle school.


Relationally:


Make being uplifting towards Sean my biggest priority.  One of the most eye-opening things that I have learned about marriage this year is that you should pretty much be in a good mood, or at least act like it, all of the time.  People don't normally give that as advice because it sounds unrealistic, unattainable, and "fake".  But that doesn't mean that you can't have a bad day, just that you can't use that as an excuse to be a jerk.  I'll say that I think that I do a good job with this, but it's still my biggest relational goal of the year.  Sean makes fun of this saying that I'm basically saying "I'll just keep doing what I'm doing because I'm great at it!" but I've reminded him that he's lucky to be married to someone that he can't argue is great at being nice :)  And I can improve in uplifting him.

Sean says that he hasn't bought me flowers in a while.  Does that count as a goal?

Sean also expressed some sentiment that he wants to make sure that my needs and wants are a priority to him, citing that it's easier to tell me no than people at work...or in e-kids...or his parents...or Mogatu (who's a cat).  I'm not totally sure how to take that, but he smiled when he said it...

And then he expressed some concern that this is public on my blog, and thus the end of our relational goals.


Professionally:


Be involved in some professional organization or team through the NICU outside of general staff nursing.  I did a lot of different things within and outside of nursing at Clemson that I enjoyed,  but since starting work, have felt like a pretty mediocre asset at best and could probably do better.

Do and feel comfortable doing NICU admissions.

Sean wants to get better and more relied upon to communicate with clients.


Financially:


Stick to the budget that we have set.  Our budget is set in a way that encourages us to live a lifestyle that would afford me the ability to not work full time when we have children.  It's not particularly difficult, but I am guilty of spending money keeping in mind that I have an entire income instead of in a way that respects a budget really is set to ultimately benefit me.

Give on a level that requires faith.  Recognize the difference between a tithe and an offering and show that recognition in our giving patterns.

Other:


Put curtains in our living room (I realize how shallow this sounds).

Redonate our dining room table and get a new one.

Sean wants to attempt to dispell the notion that he's a crazy cat guy.  It's not helping that his goal earlier in this blog was to prioritize me over the tabby.  Or maybe it will help.

The Cume: And What I Wish I Would Say...

The Cume:  An awkward silence caused by a social faux pas

For the past year and then some since Sean and I have been married, I’ll occasionally get a comment that I can never seem to figure out a response for.  Most of the time, the comment comes from someone that I just met, or hardly know, and oftentimes from someone whose own marriage, which was often done later in life, failed, making it all the more confusing to respond to.  The comment is always some variation of “you’re too young to be married”.  Sometimes it comes in the form of a question: “Why did you get married so young?” or sometimes in the form of a reprimand: “gah, you had your whole life ahead of you” or “you just change SO much in your twenties.  I just can’t imagine getting MARRIED” or my personal favorite “you’re MARRIED? (disgusted face)”.  I’ll go ahead and say, that there are certainly other social decisions more damning than being married in your twenties that seem to catch no slack, but for the sake of concentrating on this particular social faux pas, I’ll stick to the aforementioned social decision to marry young.

There are a few questions that I have for people who make these comments, but I think that the one that resonates with me the most, is “what response, exactly, are you looking to get out of me?”  Are you looking to just put in your 2 cents casually and go on? Are you looking for me to get defensive?  Do you think that I’m going to say something along the lines of ‘ya know, I never thought about that.  I’m going to go home RIGHT NOW and tell my husband that we’re actually too young to be married’.  Do you think that that makes me like you?  Do you want me to list off my credentials and why I think that I’m NOT too young to be married?  Do you want me to go through a process of elimination showing marriage as the best option? If I looked straight at someone and ASKED what response they were looking for, it’d of course, look defensive, like this blog post, but honestly, I’m curious.  In addition to that, I’d like to offer up my response, which would of course colloquially be quite extensive.  So I’m going to write it instead, and start referring people to thisgreatnewlife.blogspot.com for answers.  In reality, it’s probably more of a venting.  As a disclaimer- I do not believe that there is a magic age at which people should get married.  But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with finding the right person at the ripe old age of 22…

What’s interesting about the mindset of “you’re too young to get married” is that they are actually wrong, on all 3 accounts that I, and probably most people, consider.  The reasoning used by people who make this comment sounds ridiculous and wrong.  Statistically, these people are wrong.  And Bibically, they are wrong.

First, I’d like to address reasoning that I’ve been given for the “you’re too young” mindset, and why they sound silly when actually examined:

• You’re giving up your freedom:  So marriage is a lament of my freedom.  Ideally, I should romp around doing whatever I feel like doing because my twenties are about ME.  I should have spent a LOT of time practicing being really selfish before getting married.  By doing that, I will mature into a selfless person who will be willing to lay down my life to serve another person in a happy marriage.  Sounds logical…
• You should “date around”:  Ideally, I should have broken up with someone that I had happily dated for 4 years, and instead “date around” until people start making comments about why I’m NOT married, all the while trying to find someone TO marry.  And when I’m 29, I can cry to my friends about being always a bridesmaid and never a bride.  The people that I would be “dating around” will probably turn out to be amazing husbands and fathers once they eventually propose to me, because they too, will be living out their “freedom in their 20’s”.  They will, of course, need to sleep around with many women during their “freedom” and there’s tons of evidence to support that the more women you sleep with before you’re married, the more likely you are to stay faithful to your wife.  Really…
• You could just live together:  So we could PRACTICE being married without the commitment of actually BEING married.  And THAT’S how I can get more practice with the commitment that I’ll need in marriage.  And then I have the freedom to break up and PRACTICE divorce.  I’m not going to bother saying much about that only because any study you look at shows cohabitation as a “categorically unstable arrangement”.  Nice…
• You should have some financial stability: Being broke and single makes MUCH more sense than being broke and married.  Paying TWO rents, for TWO sets of apartment stuff, for TWO sets of stuff at the grocery store, not to mention having NO marital tax breaks actually sounds logical.  When you look at it logically, and not in a “popular opinion” light, marriage is actually the most efficient “wealth creating institution” that there is.  I’d like to hear a good argument as to why it’s not because while that’s disputed, I have yet to hear a valid reason, or actually, a reason at all why.  In our case, both of us managed to land good jobs.  Plenty of people in their late 20’s, in addition to having spent the last 10 years barely making ends meet, also racked up thousands in credit card and student debt.  And then everyone assumes they’re ready for marriage because they ARE in their late 20’s.  How financially secure…

Secondly, I’d like to address the fact that people who tell me that I married too young are statistically wrong.

• A study entitled “Later First Marriage and Marital Success” found that people who marry later in life DO fare well in survival, but poorly in quality.  According to these particular data sets though, the longest, highest quality marriages were among people who married between the ages of 22 and 25.  Sounds like I should be pretty miserable mourning my “freedom”. 
• The paper also stated that most people have little or nothing to gain in the way of marital success by postponing it until the later 20’s.  Just more time spent doing the aforementioned “dating around looking for someone to marry”.  Ironic.
• This research was confronted by a man named Norvel Glenn, who in that confrontation found that self-reported marital happiness is the GREATEST for women who married between the ages of 22-23.  Again, happiest?  What about all of those eventual regrets…
• Statistically, even the argument that young marriages are more likely to end in divorce is also pretty faulty.  That IS true for people who marry in their teens, but according to an article in the Washington Post, it’s not true after around 20.  Considering other variables, among young people who waited until they were married to have sex, the divorce rate is a statistical zero, in every single study that I could find.  That’s a lot lower than the 50% rate that society boasts.   
• Somewhat addressing the finance reasoning, statistically, married adults at ANY income level, report being happier than the wealthiest single adults.  This still holds true when the study is limited to only 18-29 year olds.
• Addressing freedom statistically, 64% of married people report satisfaction with their personal life.  That’s compared with 43% of single people.  Wish I had more time to work on personal satisfaction before I got married…
• Married people live longer, and have less health issues.  You’re never too young to do something good for your health J 

Thirdly, I’d like to address why Bibically, “you’re too young to be married” is wrong.  Briefly, only because just a cursory glance at the Bible would lead someone to believe that God actually likes marriage. 

• Ecclesiastes 4:9: Two are better than one.  For a number of reasons.  I thought “two” meant a lament of your freedom and financial disaster, certainly not a better return for work…
• Jesus performed his first miracle on this earth, at a wedding of all places.  Probably because he just hates weddings…
• Genesis 2:18:  It is not good for man to be alone.   But God, He’s in his TWENTIES!  He needs at least 10 years to drink and sleep around. 
• And lastly, I will call attention to God’s purpose for marriage which is obvious in Ephesians 5:23.  This is the verse encouraging wives to submit to their husbands (often taken out of context) and goes on to say that men should love their wives as Christ loves the church.  He gave up His life for the church.  Which tells me that the purpose of marriage is to be a show of sacrifice to mimic to the world the relationship between Christ and the church.  To make you Holy, NOT, despite ALL of these statistics that show that it does, to make you happy.  In that context, as a Christian, there is not an age at which you are all of the sudden allowed to show someone the love that Christ showed the church.  God chose MARRIAGE as the way in which His love would be displayed.  Call me crazy, but sounds to me that God Himself is a proponent of the decision to marry young. 

Ultimately, I think that marital happiness is the responsibility of the parties involved, not the age at which you get married.  I am by no means a proponent of getting married just because you’re young, or of getting married if you don’t feel like that’s the best course of action, but I did, and I felt like I should address at length my response to this tacky social comment.  So I’ll probably continue to just look at people with a “what exactly do you want me to say?” look on my face when they make the comment upon meeting me that “you got married too young”.  Because I don’t have the time in one conversation to explain a) just how inaccurate that comment actually is, and b) how much I LOVE being married.  So now you know, if you’ve read this blog, not to comment on how grievous of an indiscretion a young marriage is.  It just sounds dumb, it’s wrong, and it makes a terrible first impression.

The Worst Disservice

As a precursor to my story, Jesus makes it abundantly clear in the Bible that He LOVES children.  I don’t even feel like it’s necessary to site specific verses to prove that, because I think it’s so obvious.  And I think, given that background, that the worst people to dishonor/lead astray/devalue are children.  Especially your own.  The Bible gives instruction after instruction regarding instruction of your children.  Unfortunately, however, it seems to me in my work and in life in general, that obvious devaluing of children is a common tendency. 

Last week, I had the opportunity to teach a small group of first graders in Elevation’s elementary school ministry and was told something by a 6 year old that has weighed heavily on my heart ever since.  I was explaining to them the most well known verse of the Bible, John 3:16.  For God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only son so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.  This verse is, in and of itself, descriptive of the Gospel, the entire basis of the Christian faith.

We talked about love, and how VERY much God loves them.  The kids told me about all of the people whom they love, and about the people who love them.  Next, we talked about the gift that God gave to us.  In an effort to show them what a BIG gift God gave us when he sent His son to die for us, I asked them: have you ever had to give something away that you loved in order to help someone else?  They told me about various puppies, kittens, and old toys, and we talked about how hard it is to give away what you love.  And then, I started to change the subject to my main point: what if your mommy or daddy had to give YOU away?  

I was expecting somewhat of a shock factor.  An understanding, on some level, that God must REALLY love us if he gave His SON for us.  But what a 6 year old in my group told me really surprised me.  What she told me, was this: “but if a mommy doesn’t really want her baby then she just throws them in the dumpster”.

Yep.  If a mommy doesn’t want her baby, then she can put it in a dumpster.  REALLY?  This kid is 6.  And unfortunately, at 6, she sees a trend in society for parents to view their OWN CHILDREN as optional.  She sees parental love as conditional.  She doesn't see giving children away as difficult.  In fact, she sees it as convenient.  After all, if that's what the mommy wants.  And she relates that to God.  And this kid, I feel it's important to point out, is from an intact family.  She doesn't strike me as distressed in any way, she's just telling me what people do.  What's one option if you don't want your kid.

I was caught off guard enough to spend a minute talking about how people who do that are very sick, and how that’s not how mommies and daddies are supposed to treat their children.  But the damage is done, and the analogy, obsolete.  How are children supposed to understand the incredible gift that God gave to us when people give up or disregard their children all of the time as soon as parenthood is inconvenient for them?  And how are children supposed to understand the unconditional love of Christ if they've never experienced that type of love.  If the only physical “father” that they know treats them as disposable?

I think that most people would agree that deadbeat parents cause great disservice to their children.  Children from the adversity of a broken home are, statistically, more likely to live in poverty, have learning disabilities, be depressed, commit suicide, enter into abusive relationships/marriages, get divorced themselves, etc. But quite possibly, the greatest disservice of all, is that by treating their children so optionally, they make what is the most important thing that children could hear, the Gospel, almost impossible to comprehend. 

It’s a thought that I’ve heard more than once that the most obvious way for the devil to destroy our relationships with God is at the level of the family.  If you can create havoc in a family, then you place a child at greater risk for all of the aforementioned adversity, you can create a normalcy that includes fake loyalty, conditional love, and advancement of an individual at the expense of everyone else, even their families.  And you can, thereby, destroy the faith of children, faith that is cited in the Bible as a benchmark for everyone one else by Jesus Christ Himself.  That.  Is sad.

Life as We Didn't Know It

My grand dad said that after working in the Danish underground through World War II, that he was "bored" with the lack of activity when the war was over.  He was a family physician in Denmark, and evidently, normal everyday life didn't feel right, thus prompting his decision to join a whaling expedition to Antarctica in search of whale blubber for the profit of Scandinavia.  Sounds exciting, right?  He was the only physician on board, responsible for the health and well being of all men on board for I think 3 months, as well as 12 passengers that stayed with them for a smaller part of the trip.  His stories from the expedition are impressive.  He put a man's leg back together with wood after it was almost amputated with a piece of whaling equipment, so well that the man was able to work again.  He performed an appendectomy with a fake anesthesiologist and no antibiotics and was told that his patient was the first of his kind to survive such a procedure on the open sea.  All of this danger in the name of regaining the kind of adrenaline and excitement that the war had provided.  At first, you have to think, what crazy person joins a 3 month whaling expedition to Antarctica because they're 'bored', but now I wonder if on a smaller scale, I sort of understand how weird a normal life could feel.

What sparks this thought, is that today marks one year since Sean graduated from college, beginning a year for us, of a LOT of change.  A lot of trials.  A lot of uncertainty.  A LOT of trusting God.  It's been an AMAZING year, don't get me wrong, but FAR from normal.  This time last year, I knew that in a year, my life would be right side up again, but a very different normal, and that May 9, 2011, was FAR far away.  This time last year, my name was Maria Seear.  I had lived my whole life in Greenville, South Carolina, and in Clemson, only 45 minutes away.  We went to church at Crosspoint, and had a lot of college friends.  I had dated Sean for 3 1/2 years and was in the middle of planning a wedding, which had already taken over a year.  I was coaching swim team for McCarter, and couldn't imagine doing anything else.  I was majoring in nursing, but had no real idea of what I would do when I finished.  I had never been in an ICU.  Sean and I, by this time, knew that we'd be in Charlotte, but had no idea where we'd live.  Sean had just gotten a job, but had never been.  Didn't know if he'd like it, didn't know who he'd be working with, and barely knew how to get there.  I'd had a ferret in college who had died in January, so I wanted us to get a cat eventually.

Since then, Sean graduated.  Sean started his first big kid job.  My mom was diagnosed with cancer.  I finished a 20 year association with SAIL swimming.  We became parents to a tabby cat.  We signed our first solo rent agreement and moved to an apartment in Charlotte.  We got married.  I changed my name.  I completed a semester of commuting back and forth to Clemson.  I graduated from Clemson.  I became an RN.  My mom finished her cancer treatment.  I was offered and started my first big kid job.  And most recently, we bought our first house.  We've had milestone, after milestone, after milestone.

People that last year, we saw almost every day

Sean's graduation

A swim team that I love :)

Our First Apartment

Our Wedding

Graduation from Nursing

So now, here we are on May 9th, 2011.  The anniversary of the beginning of a year of change. My name is Maria Crandall.  I am the wife of Sean Crandall, the proud mother of a tabby cat named Mogatu, and the daughter of a cancer survivor.  I am a graduate of Clemson University.  We call Charlotte, NC home and I work at Presbyterian Hospital in the NICU as a registered nurse.  Sean has been a civil engineer for one year, and feels like he has a handle on his job.  He likes the people he works with.  We have signed our first solo rent agreement, decorated our first apartment, and bought our first house.  We go to Elevation Church, serve on E-kidz on Sundays, and while we keep in touch with our college friends, have a whole new set of friends in Charlotte.  I know new roads and new grocery store cashiers at a new grocery store.  And I LOVE my new life.  But sometimes, I feel like I'm in the witness protection program, or in a dream, because there's almost nothing about life that's the same as it was last year, and more than that, hardly any major thing in my life is something that I even KNEW about a year ago.  So for the coming year, with no children on the docket for our near future, and no real uncertainty that we're currently feeling other than what color couch to get, the plan is to spend the year continuing the same life that we have right now.  That's what we had done until this past year, but now, that idea seems foreign, just like the calm after World War II in Scandinavia.  Unusually calm...and really nice.

This is LOVE!

Last week, our church sponsored an event in Charlotte along with 26 other Charlotte area churches called LOVE Week (watch the video), designed to show LOVE to the city of Charlotte (Charlotte Observer).  The goal was 25,000 hours of service to the city between February 26 and March 6.  Sean and I served 20, and wish that we were here for the second weekend because we had an awesome time.  In this one week, 60,000 meals were made for families.  30,000 sandwiches were made for the homeless.  28 tons of trash were collected.  17,000 pairs of shoes were donated.  And of course, 34, 257 hours of service were given to the city.  Providence campus alone made over 20,000 meals for people in Haiti via Stop Hunger Now in just a couple of hours.  I think that that's incredible.  Pastor Steven Furtick said in his blog that this is what the church exists for, to show the city that they are LOVED, by their church and their God.

Photo online of Providence Campus's meal prepartion

LOVE Week Photo Video by Sean Lyon Photography

Our God is LOVE

⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

1 John 4: 7-12

On being FOR:

The idea behind LOVE Week was to show the city of Charlotte what Christians are FOR and to be known for that, since so often, we are known for what we are against.  I agree that it's obnoxious to watch people who claim to love picket outside of institutions and put people down.  That's NOT what Christianity is about.  And I don't think that that behavior is driven by and rooted in love.  But nontheless, Christianity IS a religion that's against a number of things, so I feel like I should address that before I press submit on this blog.  Christians are against certain things because we're FOR certain things (honor, marriage, life, honesty, and love), and you can't truly be FOR anything unless you're against something else.  Jesus said in Luke 11:23 that 'whoever is not with me, is against me..', so while that's out of context, I agree.  Other notable souls in agreement are Helen Keller who said that apathy is the greatest human evil of all, and a nursing textbook that I read that said that what you permit, you promote.

For example, you can't truly be for marriage, unless you're against divorce.  You can't be for life, unless you're against murder.  Thus why the notion of "being open-minded" kind of confuses me.  If you're for both marriage and divorce (and therefore open-minded), than you're not for either of them.  What you are, is ambivalent and apathetic.  True ambivalence and ampathy is a personality trait with which I have never come in contact with, probably because most people who are truly ambivalent/apathetic, are people who believe that there is no such thing as right or wrong.  Ted Bundy (a known serial killer) used this platform in one of his final interviews, so there ya go.  I wouldn't marry someone who was ambivalent about it, and I would worry about the children of parents who were openly AMBIVALENT about their child's health and wellbeing.  I think that most people, Christian and non-Christian alike, probably agree.  Mark Mittleburg said that without God, and thus without a true guiding post for what is right and what is wrong, what you're left with is preferences (I would call that ambivalent).  Murder might not be my thing, but that's great if it's your's.  I don't think that anyone wants a world like that.

So all of this to say that yes, Christians are against murder, dishonesty, dishonor, gossip, divorce, and that hasn't changed.  But that's because we are FOR LOVE.  Not the other way around.  We are not FOR love because we're against other things.  We're against things because we're FOR love, loving our God and our neighbor, SO WHOLEHEARTEDLY, that it makes it impossible NOT to be SO WHOLEHEARTEDLY against anything that gets in the way of LOVE.  And that is what we should be known for.

Superbowl XLV

I'm not a huge football person, but I do like the Superbowl, mainly because I like potlucks and Superbowl parties have that element.  Sean and I celebrated this occasion with 2 Superbowl parties in Charlotte and had a really good time, but here's the highlights:

Buffalo Chicken Dip (my go-to bring-to-a-party dish)

3 boneless skinless chicken breasts that you boil

Ranch dressing

2-3 packs Cream Cheese

Cheddar Cheese

Frank's Buffalo Wing Sauce

Photo jacked from allrecipes.com

1.  Pull boiled chicken apart into little pieces (it's better pulled than chopper-ed)

2.  Put about half Ranch and half Buffalo sauce into the bowl of chicken pieces

3.  Keep pouring more, half and half, until there's a really good bit

4.  Put about 2 1/2 blocks of Cream Cheese in a casserole dish and warm until softened

5.  Spread Cream Cheese around the bottom and pour chicken mix on top

6.  Put Cheddar Cheese to your liking on top

7.  Heat for about 25 minutes at 350

Other highlights include an awesome white chocolate amaretto dip that another girl in our small group (Erin) made.  She said it's from a package and I have no photo, but it was delicious.  She also managed to roll her dip into a ball which I thought was impressive since I tried earlier in the day to do that with my chocolate chip cheese cake ball and ended up giving up and putting it in a bowl.  As well as this commercial lesson from Bridgestone on Karma:

And of course that the Packers won.  Sean tells me that's who we were pulling for.  And the half-time show too.  I thought it was really good.